Josi Kilpack: Mormon Author

Josi S. Kilpack is an award-winning fiction writer, known most recently for her Sadie Hoffmiller Culinary mystery series. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Kilpack remembers that as a child she hated to read until her mother gave her The With of Blackbird Pond to read. Since then, she has read voraciously and credits those books as education that taught her to write. When she was bedridden with a pregnancy, she combated her depressed feelings by writing a story that came to mind. By the time the expected baby was six-weeks old, she had written a full book. Using feedback from a publisher who rejected her novel, she learned how to write, retooled her book, and published it with a small press that required a payment of $2,500. The book was poorly edited and did not sell well. The experience taught her that she needed to learn more about writing, so she began attending writing workshops and conferences. Her next book sold 2,000 copies the first year.

Her novel, Sheep’s Clothing, won the Whitney Award 2007 for Mystery/Suspense. Lemon Tart, the first book in the Sadie Hoffmiller Culinary Mystery series was a finalist in 2009. She wrote twelve books for that series, with titles such as English Trifle, Blackberry Crumble, Tres Leches Cupcakes, Fortune Cookie, and Wedding Cake. Each book in the series included recipes that she compiled into a cookbook and published in 2014, Sadie’s Little Black Recipe Book. She is also an author featured in the Newport Ladies Book Club series. Her other titles include Lullaby, Her Good Name, and To Have and To Hold.

Her book All that Makes Life Bright: The Love and Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe garnered an honorable mention in the romance category in the 2018 Foreword Reviews' Indies Book of the Year awards.

She lives in Willard, Utah, with her husband and children.